Cricket guide
How to read a cricket scorecard
A cricket scorecard fits a whole innings into two small tables and a line of shorthand. Once you know what the abbreviations mean, you can read how a match went in under a minute.
The headline score
IND 245/6 (43.2 ov) means India have scored 245 runs and lost 6 wickets after 43 overs and 2 balls.
- The number after the dot counts balls, not tenths. An over has six balls, so 43.5 overs is followed by 44.0.
- Runs first, then wickets is the style in India and most of the world. Australian scorecards traditionally flip it: 6/245.
- An innings ends when ten wickets fall ("all out"), when the side's overs run out, or in a Test when the captain declares. A declaration is shown with a
d, as in 450/7d.
The batting card
Each batter gets one row. A typical line looks like this:
| Batter | Dismissal | R | B | 4s | 6s | SR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Kumar | c Reyes b Silva | 54 | 41 | 6 | 2 | 131.71 |
R is runs, B is balls faced, 4s and 6s are boundaries, and SR (strike rate) is runs per 100 balls: 54 ÷ 41 × 100 = 131.71. In T20 cricket a strike rate above 140 is quick; in Tests, batters often score well under 60 and nobody minds.
Dismissal shorthand
| You see | It means |
|---|---|
b Silva | Bowled by Silva: the ball hit the stumps. |
c Reyes b Silva | Caught by the fielder Reyes off Silva's bowling. |
c & b Silva | Caught and bowled: the bowler took the catch. |
lbw b Silva | Leg before wicket: the ball would have hit the stumps but struck the batter's pad first. |
st †Das b Khan | Stumped by the wicketkeeper Das while the batter was out of the crease. The † marks the keeper; a * marks the captain. |
run out (Das) | Run out by the named fielder(s). The bowler gets no credit. |
not out | Still batting when the innings ended. |
Extras and fall of wickets
Extras 12 (b 1, lb 4, w 6, nb 1) lists runs nobody scored off the bat: byes, leg byes, wides and no-balls. Wides and no-balls count against the bowler; byes and leg byes don't.
FoW: 1-34 (Kumar, 5.2 ov) means the first wicket fell with the team on 34, two balls into the sixth over. A run of wickets close together tells you where the innings collapsed.
The bowling card
| Bowler | O | M | R | W | Econ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R. Silva | 10 | 1 | 48 | 3 | 4.80 |
O is overs bowled, M is maidens (overs where the bowler conceded no runs), R is runs conceded, W is wickets and Econ (economy) is runs conceded per over. Many scorecards also show dot balls, wides and no-balls.
Chasing a target
The side batting second needs one more run than the first side scored, so a first-innings 245 sets a target of 246. Live updates then show two rates:
- CRR, the current run rate: runs so far divided by overs faced.
- RRR, the required run rate: runs still needed divided by overs left.
"Need 45 runs from 30 balls" is a required rate of 9.00 an over. When the RRR climbs well above the CRR late in a chase, the fielding side is usually on top.
How results are written
- Won by 5 wickets: the chasing side reached the target with five wickets still in hand.
- Won by 32 runs: the side batting first defended its total by that margin.
- Won by an innings and 40 runs: a Test result where one team's single innings beat the other's two combined.
- DLS method: rain shortened the match, and the target was recalculated using the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method.
- Super Over: a one-over-each tiebreaker used in many T20 and one-day competitions.
Test match words you'll see in live updates
- Stumps: play has ended for the day.
- Lead by / trail by: the gap between the two teams' first-innings totals.
- Follow-on: in a five-day Test, a side that trails by 200 or more after the first innings can be asked to bat again straight away.